WFM affirms, as stated by the Millennium Summit Declaration, the "central position of the UN General Assembly as the chief deliberative, policy-making and representative organ of the United Nations." As the most democratic and representative body in international legal order, the UN General Assembly’s supreme policy role should be supported by an equivalent centrality and corresponding authority. The UN General Assembly is the most legitimate body in the international arena and should play the role accordingly.
WFM recognizes the current criticism of the General Assembly as a ‘debating society’ and the political dynamics at play. With the intention of increasing the Assembly’s credibility, WFM’s primary goal is to improve the Assembly’s efficiency, accountability and transparency.
To reverse the current fragmentation of the international system where international policies diverge from one international body to the other, WFM calls for the empowerment of the UN General Assembly to ensure policy coherence. As the only international body with a democratic scope and a broad cross-sectored mandate, the General Assembly is the logical forum to resolve the differences among parallel treaties and standards involving poverty eradication, trade agreements, environmental protection, human rights standards, labor rights and social development. Thus, the Assembly’s mandate should extend to the coordination of overall policy within the UN system including the Bretton Woods Institutions and the World Trade Organization (WTO).
In principle WFM believes that the General Assembly should be given more capacity to provide oversight on peace and security matters. The General Assembly is empowered to exercise this right by article 11 of the UN Charter, but which it has not invoked sufficiently.
WFM supports the empowerment of the UN General Assembly to act when the Security Council is unwilling or blocked from addressing humanitarian or security crises. WFM calls for a greater use of General Assembly Resolution 377 (V) of 3 November 1950, better known by its title ‘Uniting for Peace’. This resolution stipulates that "if the Security Council ..fails to exercise its primary responsibility ...the General Assembly shall consider the matter immediately with a view to making appropriate recommendations to Members for collective measures to maintain and restore international peace and security." The Uniting for Peace resolution procedure has only been used ten times since its adoption. If a democratic body such as the General Assembly had power over decisions on the use of armed force, it is possible that many wars and conflicts in these last decades could have been avoided. Uniting for Peace is an opportunity for multilateral action as opposed to unilateral war and WFM calls on all governments to invoke it when the Security Council fails to maintain international peace and security.
In this area:
Introduction to International Democracy | Primacy of the UN General Assembly | Security Council Reform | Strengthening the UN Economic and Social Council | Expanding Citizens' Rights | UN Parliamentary Assembly | Accountability and Transparency | International Processes for Democracy
